Successes and Failures of Operation Odyssey Dawn (OOD)

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Recommended: Lectures on Operation Odyssey Dawn

The case study and presentation used for this Joint Operations paper was about Operation Odyssey Dawn (OOD). I will describe two operational-level successes and two failures experienced during the operation. I will offer clear proposals, that if implemented could have prevented those failures. One of the operational-level successes during OOD was that the Libyan Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) was quickly degraded and an effective No Fly Zone (NFZ) established. The second success was that maritime forces overcame logistics and target challenges in order to enforce the arms embargo. Offering clear-cut proposals to help prevent some of the failures from occurring is not easy to identify when you consider the operation as a whole. Since the operation changed hands from a U.S. led operation to a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) run operation there are two different aspects to look at when considering areas that failed. One is the Joint Operations within the U.S. and the second is Interagency Global Operations and NATO. I would first like to point out, that in my opinion, the U.S. should had led and directed this mission from start to finish. Since that did not occur NATO should have intervened earlier than they did in which case, the U.S. should have been relegated to a supporting role during the entirety of the operation. Due to the unique circumstance of the situation with the transition of the operation I will focus on fixing two failures that occurred while the U.S. led OOD. The first failure experienced during the operations was that US Africa Command (AFRICOM) was an incomplete geographic combatant command (GCC). AFRICOM was established in 2008 as a new kind of geographic combatant command (GCC), one foc... ... middle of paper ... ... of the mission. Bad communication and taking shortcuts in most situations do not lead to anything short of a mistake or disaster. Another factor that affected not having endstate goals set up was that AFRICOM was manned predominately by non-DOD personnel and civilians. AFRICOM’s lack of assigned forces and its reliance on shared resources limited its ability to quickly adapt to the changing requirements. AFRICOM was not manned by enough military personnel that would have been able to provide the guidance and leadership for a kinetic operation if needed. The solution to this problem is to have a clear endstate goal. Easily stated but not easy to do in the ever changing environment that they faced. In conclusion, even with the multiple challenges AFRICOM faced during this time they were able to overcome and meet the mission objectives the best they could.

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